


Master

by lit103



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: flaying, so much flaying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit103/pseuds/lit103
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you flay a man, you don’t just kill him, though you do kill him. But first you unmake him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Master

There’s an art to this. You may not think so, but there is. You’ve just never seen a true artist at work. Don’t say I’m a true artist. I’m not—not yet. But I might be, someday. 

This water isn’t too hot, is it? You’d tell me if it was, wouldn’t you? Good.

Not everyone who sees you with Reek will understand, my father says. But I understand. I understand perfectly. You keep Reek so you’ll always have someone by your side to obey you—someone other than your dogs. No one in this castle is bound to obey you, he says. Remind me, why  _do_ they obey you? Because of you, father, I reply. When I’m here, yes, he says. But when I am not—why do they obey you? Your name, father, I reply. Oh, but you don’t  _have_  my name, now do you, Ramsay? he says.

I flayed my first man when I was fifteen years old. He called me “Lord Snow.” He thought he was being respectful. I thought my father would be proud. I told him that very night, over dinner (steamed leeks  _again_ ), and he looked at me with those pale eyes and said, in the mildest of tones, Why did you do that, Ramsay? The man was only telling the truth.

It’s moments like these that I imagine flaying my father. Pulling the skin from his body as easily as I’d peel a ripe peach… They say the Boltons of old could do it like that: remove skin so gently the wearer wouldn’t notice it was gone til you held it up in front of their face. I can’t do it like that. Not yet. I have to pull, and pull hard, before it comes all the way off. You know the way. I practice, of course. Once, when I was practicing, my father came home unexpectedly. The man was still alive somehow, after all that time, and my father walked in a circle around him, then leaned in to inspect him at close range. Well, your technique leaves something to be desired, he finally said. But no one could accuse you of lacking  _enthusiasm_.

Do you know, I think he meant it as an insult? But that’s the only real difference between my father and I, when it comes to flaying: enthusiasm. You see, no one could call my father an artist. He doesn’t flay much anymore—it’s fallen out of fashion—but when he does there’s something not a little…  _workmanlike_ about his approach. He’s even been known to wear  _gloves_ while he does it. It would be heretical to suggest he doesn’t enjoyit, except that my father doesn’t really seem to enjoy much of anything. He must like suffering, to some extent; why the leeches, else? Why else the steamed leeks? When he leaves the Dreadfort next, we’ll go out to the forest and hunt—deer, this time… We’ll blacken the outside over the fire, just for a minute, so it’s raw on the inside, so when we bite into it the blood runs down our chins…

Me, I love flaying. I love it like nothing else in the world. More than the hunt, more than the kill… When you flay a man, you don’t just kill him, though you do kill him. But first you unmake him. The men I flay forget everything. Their wives, their children. Their own names. And when they’ve forgotten everything, there’s nothing they won’t say, nothing they won’t do, nothing they won’t  _be_ … But even flaying has its limits. No matter how good you get, it always ends the same way. I used to think, when I flayed a man, that this was a power such as only the gods must feel, but now I know the gods would laugh at the comparison, they’d laugh loud and long. Any man can  _un_ make a man; all it takes is one drop of poison, one thrust of even the bluntest sword. But it takes a special kind of man to  _make_ a man. It takes, if I may say so, an artist… 

I had no plan at first. This one wasn’t part of any plan, nor this one, nor even this one. (That one’s fresh, isn’t it? It’s healing very well…) Only after doing it for some time was I able to realize exactly what it was I  _was_  doing: taking a man, breaking him down, and building up a whole new one in his place. Til he would say anything, do anything,  _be_ anyone— _and live_.

There was just one problem. How could I know I’d succeeded? How could I be sure there was truly none of the old man left? The razor, yes—but the razor hesitated. Just for a moment, but a moment was enough. Your sister, as it turned out, devised the ultimate test—a test I could never have conducted without her help. Only when you crawled back into your cage did I know you were truly complete.

My father is wrong about me. I  _am_ a Bolton, and he will know it one day. I am a Bolton, and I may not be a god, but I’m the next best thing. I’m an  _artist_. And just like he’s wrong about me, Reek, he’s wrong about you. You aren’t my dog. You aren’t my minion. You’re my masterpiece.

▼

**Author's Note:**

> Finished season 4 a few days ago and rooting so hard for the Boltons right now. Yessss Roose. Ward that North.


End file.
